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ON OTHER CRITICS AND THE CRITICAL RESPONSE TO THIS FILM
To echo the offhand remarks of Saturday Night Live's Brooklyn characters, "Forget about it!"
As for TIME and NEWSWEEK, I think we as readers and film lovers have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that these publications have become virtually worthless in covering books and film. The magazines are obviously fighting a losing battle with television and computer networks, but they aren't putting up much of a fight. Their reviewers seem shallow, stupid, and unforgivably uninformed. Let's kiss them good-bye.
TIME and NEWSWEEK, you no longer play a significant role in covering the news surrounding the arts, or in covering the arts themselves. You could turn this around. You could start writing reviews which are actually intelligent essays; you could return to commentary with perspective and validity; you could do your homework on the context of the films and books you review. Eh. I've given up on you.
The success of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE is only one of many, many proofs that these magazines are no longer major cultural players. It is sad.
On the NEW YORKER, Pauline Kael, I miss you. Tina Brown, why don't you open up the NEW YORKER to teams of reviewers of films and movies? Give us a real controversy of criticism -- review more books, more films and publish more reviewers. I'd love it, but I read the magazine every week no matter what.
On Janet Maslin in the New York Times, though I cherish her great praise of the film, I disagree, as already stated, with the dismissal of the ideas of the film and her dismissal of the richest, most complex and most thought provoking films I've ever seen. People will be viewing it and talking about it when we are no longer here.
On Caryn James, I treasure what you wrote in the New York Times.
On LIZ SMITH and her very frank and brave questions as to whether or not IWTV was a gay allegory, and her question as to why people just don't make a gay film, and why do gays have to be disguised as vampires -- Here's my answer. Ms. Smith, the gays are us. That's all there is to it. There is no disguise. Gay allegory doesn't exist apart from moral allegory for everyone. This is now evident.
PHILADELPHIA made the statement in a very direct way. Tom Hanks in that film played a man that could be any one of us for any number of reasons! Years and years ago, a gay allegory was made called BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. For most of its artistic life, people have been totally unaware that this film is a gay allegory, and with reason. IT DOESN'T MATTER. If it's about gays, it's about all of us, the secrets we carry, the traits which set us apart individually from others, the burdens we bear, the rage we feel, and the common condition that binds us.
The characters of IWTV aren't gays disguised as vampires. They are us. They are us in our loneliness, in our fear, in our spiritual and moral isolation. They are us in our ruthlessness, and in our desperate quest for companionship, warmth, love and reassurance in a world full of gorgeous temptations and very real horrors. They are fallible beings with the power of gods; and that is exactly what we are, all of us.
In sum, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE is bigger that a gay allegory, and so is almost any gay allegory.
Gender
influences everything but determines nothing! Vampires transcend gender.
We as a modern people transcend gender, though we can never escape it.
Ours is a time for which there are no precedents with regard to gender
and freedom. Look in vain to ancient Rome. Look in vain to the Middle Ages.
There has never been so much affluence, scientific knowledge and so much
common awareness of violence and injustice. There has never been so much
real wealth for so many, combined with instantaneous media confrontation
of poverty and suffering. Some of us see life as a horror story, but a
horror story with great, great meaning.
This
section last modified 11-11-99
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